Another sad sack work of fiction, or: We (heart) Carver

And that’s how it ends. We’re posted up on the porch in the dead of night. The fog sits low over town, low enough that the glow of the prison lights are reflected like an amber heaven, and the airport tower slices through at regular intervals, first white, then blue. The night is cold, and the cigarette smoke hangs in the air around us, and his last statement with it. I’m left thinking, this is how it ends.

It was always going to come out this way, with him begrudging me, or maybe me hating him, or both of us turning to other cheeks, other warmth. I’ve been ready for this since the day we met, when I knew, even then, that between the two of us there wasn’t enough warmth to hold up in a frost, let alone a hard freeze. We’re rich in soul, but poor of heart. I think now that I chose him because I knew it wouldn’t end dramatically; I understood that between us it would simply end. It was a nice enough go of it, for all it was. I’m only sorry it’s ending now, just now, when it seems one needs another more than anything else.

The foghorn bleats, keeping time and measuring the distance between breaths. The local stray cats slink by, streaking home to the widow who feeds them. In passing, they incite the neighborhood dogs to barking, and suddenly the stretched silence is filled with an apparent cacophony. Between the horn, the dogs, the barking seals, and the neighbors arguing, the silence seems almost enough to make me sorry over this.

But I won’t be regretful or sad, it’s not in our idiom. “So that’s that,” I manage, my own contribution to the noise and lack thereof. And it is; we loved in our own halfhearted way, each too busy protecting our own to actually reach out and care for the other. It is done, and was done, and will now be gotten beyond. He has finished rolling his cigarette and tucks the package back into his deep pocket, mutters to the affirmative; we have finished the last beers in the case and lay the empties beside their fallen bretheren. And we get up; he steps off the porch and into the mist, and I make sure to lock the door behind me.

In Which I Manage to Cock-block Myself

This post brought to you by Bacardi Silver(TM).

I managed, through complete and utter fabulousness, to cock-block mySELF last night. In summation, the drunk me hates the sober me and doesn't want me to be happy. It was likely my subconscious trying to save me from a poor fit, but feels bitter nonetheless. Not once, mind you, but twice. Twice. And I repeat myself.

Talking to so many old lovers recently, and wondering who I'd be if things had been different. Did I ever tell you that we got pregnant? That I killed it, and that I was secretly glad; not so much because I was afraid of being a mother, but that I was afraid of telling you, and finding out that you weren't the man I envisioned you to be? But we were pregnant. It happened, and lately I have trouble ignoring it. Also because lately everyone I know is pregnant, and I can't go a single stupid day without hearing about the status of some dumb broad's uterus. This kills me.

I was never good at friends. So much about envisioning another life is scary, but so much of this one is already played out and old. It's maybe time to leave. It's too late to leave gracefully, but just the right time to cut one's losses and head for the hills of my youth. Stubborn has gotten me nothing but hurt.

I'm so glad to be older. I'm glad in that I think I've finally arrived at some sort of peace. All that anything requires any more is time. Everything passes through me, all the joy and all the anguish, and it feels so much at the time, but it all passes. It's nice to know that you just have to have the patience to wait it out anymore. Things all felt so goddamn important when I was younger, and now I have the ability to relax, to let the swell pass over me, bend me and release me, and know that I just have to let go and hold my breath. With enough waiting, everything is right as rain. Imagining that rain is right, in this case.

And I bid you good day, or good night. Know that I am thinking of you, as it would seem that only dearest friends read this, and I have not even the common courtesy to return your calls. In my own way, always in my own way. Here's to us, to you, and to the unknown pleasant occurrances of our futures.

It's for you, Beeb.

Back then, we were living on the southern coast of Oregon, just outside of town. We posed as an engaged couple so we could rent the house; we posed as engaged to avoid the ire of the conservative retirement community. In fact, we were living in sin, I suppose. As with the original sin, it ended in banishment. But at the time, it felt so adult, and I felt so nested there. In retrospect, how young we were! It seems silly that it all felt so very important, permanent. Now, years later, I haven’t gone far. He, however, rocketed off and alighted 400 miles away, in a life completely foreign to me. We were so happy then, how dare he be happier now!

While I can clearly remember the nauseating emptiness when I returned to the house after being away to find him gone, gone, gone, that’s not what I remember most. I remember more clearly picking dandelions, building the garden, burying the baby chicken that didn’t make it (in the rain, under the big rock). I can still smell the sickly new-carpet fumes, which were neatly covered up by my sugar-fire accident. That Christmas when we made all those damn presents for everyone, the Moroccan dinner party. Him, repairing books on the pneumatic desk that was too heavy for me to remove after he left. Developing pictures in the laundry room. Walking across the river bridge into town. For some reason, what I remember best is the good stuff. That’s what makes remembering so sad.

The end of the year, the season of reckoning, is fast approaching, and I am half-way through my twenty-ninth year. I’m trying to accept that I am not the woman I thought I’d be, and sometimes recently I wonder if I left her up there in Oregon. She’s living out the life I was meant to have, and I’m cold and damp here by the ocean, huddled next to the heater and dreaming that we’ll cross paths again.

Reach out and chav someone

Dearest R: I am comforted to know that, even though I haven't seen you in years, you continue to occupy a small space in the world, and live and breathe somewhere not so very far away. We talk on the phone almost weekly, and I can't imagine what problems we can't solve in those hours. The connections between everything seem so clear when we talk, drawing the lines from one thing to the next. I like to imagine we are having coffee together, that we are at your house with your giant dogs, or at mine out on the porch. I appreciate that you exist, because I need you, and I don't ever say it enough: thank you for it all.

Stupid sad, and overslept

From the Iliad of Homer (transl. by Pope):

"Fix'd is the term to all the race of earth;
And such the hard condition of our birth:
No force can then resist, no flight can save,
All sink alike, the fearful and the brave."

Can't shake this. Back to bed.

What we have been doing here

It’s that I can see my breath in the house in the mornings.

It’s the sink clogged slow by dog hair, my hair, the innards of a stuffed rat.

It’s finding the lost sock under the bed, weeks later.

It’s eating three eggs, half-cooked, for dinner because there’s nothing else.

It’s gin, and so much of it, but never enough.

It’s sleeping in on Sunday mornings, it’s your chin on my cheek.

It’s unopened mail rising like the leaning tower outside of the door.

It’s talking on the porch in the middle of the night.

It’s him, and him, and him, and you.

It’s ‘Virginia gone quite mad while shaving her armpits.’

It’s running, and pushing, and hating but mostly kidding.

It’s what we have been doing here.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Lunch (or: There's Been Too Much Carver Around Here)

“I’m done with him,” she says, rearranging her cigarette lighter on the table so the sun catches its’ surface and spikes into her empty glass. “It’s tiring, and I want to be free to do other things; he’s getting in the way.”

Crossing to the fridge for more ice, all I can muster is “mm hmm.” I have the creeping feeling she is waiting for me to defend him. He and I were friends, after all, in the way back. Classmates in primary school and the like.

“He wants me to be there for him, but when is he ever there for me?” She holds her glass out for the ice offered, swirls it around.

“Like last week when he changed your tire,” I suggest, adding whiskey to our glasses and stretching my legs out onto the empty chair. “Wasn’t that him doing something for you?”

“Yeah, but that was practical, that wasn’t something I wanted, it was something I needed.” She sighs and takes a pull off her glass. “Plus, the sex just isn’t that good.”

“It’s apparently good enough that you keep ending up together. He’s a good man; so what if he isn’t sweet? You can’t have it all.” It doesn’t feel like the right thing to say, but it’s the best I can do. I know she can do better, but she isn’t so sure. It’s going to take time to convince her, if she can even be convinced.

She’s pushing the toast crumbs on the table in front of her into parallel lines, first one way, then the other. “I just don’t have the energy for it anymore. I’m starting to hate him.”

This strikes me as odd, and I sip from my glass to keep from saying so. She spent three whole years pining for him, during which I spent endless conversations listening to his virtues extolled, his actions analyzed, his movements detailed. If she hates him, it’s only that they hate each other, and that’s what keeps them together. The whiskey burns my throat as I light one of her cigarettes, waiting. The smoke curls blue in the sunlight, sweeping in unexpected arcs with the draft from the open window.

“I’m done with him. I’m not doing this anymore.” She sighs again and gulps her drink, chewing the ice as she looks questioningly at me.

I sit and wait, knowing that she will not leave him, knowing that she will speak first.

Find your own pose!

Not entirely true, but reminiscent of the way I prefer to sleep: tangly.

Excalibur traits and tendencies: Excalibur couples may battle just as much as other couples (and participate in more than their fair share of public huffs), but they look so good together, it outweighs any other deficiencies they may share. It isn't that they're classically good-looking, or similarly sized (though certainly both those pairings are permissible). It's more that the aesthetic chord they strike satisfies in profound ways. Like gorgeously plated food or song filled with unusual harmonies, the wan and freckled hand-in-hand with the tragically tan, the pigeon-toed with the duck-walkers, these Excalibur couples achieve such perfection in their pairing that reminds the world that anything is possible.

Case of the Mondays

It's earthquake weather in town lately, and as much as it's unsettling, I love it. Sunny and warm and mostly still. I would enjoy the days more, however, if I could just sleep a little. I feel like I spend my nights listening to other people sleep instead of doing it myself. Believe me: if you sleep anywhere in my vicinity, I am an expert in how you snore. I've decided everyone does it, it's just a matter of degrees. Also: your snoring pisses me off. It's jealousy; why can't I be snoring?

Here's hoping that there won't be an accounting of all my mistakes, especially not on a Monday.

The four My Little Ponies of the apocalypse

Do you remember when you were in school and you'd stay up late, after everyone else was sleeping or passed out, having an absolute heart-to-heart with a friend? Do you remember how cathartic, how gut-wrenching, how that felt?
I have always loved being awake when noone else is. Being an insomniac, this is fortunate. As much as I love sunny days and lazy afternoons, I have always loved being awake in the perfect quiet of the middle of the night, or in that charged stillness of the early day.
The cousins were in town, including my favorite one, the clever and sensitive one, and we stayed up talking until it was too cold to sit on the porch anymore, and it felt like home, and like youth, and like whatever that contentment is that is the opposite of lonely.
((If "atypical" is the opposite of "typical," why isn't "alone" the opposite of "lone?"))
Thanks, cousin.

Stone, stone, ferry me down there

Good news: Dr. thinks that the Jupiter-sized piece of me he kept as a souveneir was enough, if not plenty.
Bad news: Feeling like I am being stabbed with a hot poker in the guts every time I cough, laugh, sit down, stand up, or breathe (which is unfortunately all too often). "Mild discomfort" my ass. What does he know, anyhow?

I slept too well on painkillers last night, but had to drive today, and find that Tylenol is no substitute for decent barbituates.

Sorry, nothing cheerful about today whatsoever. Oh, except Softball! Wish us luck.

F.I.N.E., thanks.

I'm on my second cup of coffee and things are going swimmingly. It's sunny today and almost balmy, and I spent a long while contemplating the surf before heading down to work this morning. The day seems full of opportunity, and in my stomach is a pit of worry. I have a surgery scheduled today, and I am frightened of it. It's going to be uncomfortable, sure, but they make things to take care of that. It's more about what it means, not what it is, that is the rub. That, and I'd really like to go out in life with all the parts I came in with. At this point, I'm down by two tonsils and some scar tissue; I'd really meant to hold the line with those three things but have failed again. Is it because I am broken, or because I was never broken?

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer, but wish we didn't.

Thought of the Day, Confidential to Newt: We don't have to become our parents, but we have to accept having made ourselves in their image before we can reject them and remake ourselves. They're good people, and happy in their own way; they had the best of intentions. We're not failing them by failing to become them. It is our job as children to surpass them, and that is the challenge.

Cost of Leaving

Price of living in a small town: I'm restless. We don't get a summer here, just a 6-month-long spring which segues right on into fall. Being emotionally driven by light and weather, summer feels like endless possibilities that just don't pan out. I'm uneasy, and desperately want a new life.

Driving over Bald Hills today with W, I am reminded at how delicious life is, and that if it's Town that's getting to me, I could just as well leave. If only I hadn't felt the need to put down roots. The cost of staying is high, but the cost of leaving seems higher. To transition from this known to either a completely new unknown or trying to reinsert myself into an old skin seems much more painful than just staying, for once, and trying to make the here just where I want to be.

If I could change it all, would I? New face, new id, less ego, more tolerance. More girl, less stability. They all seem like unsavory tradeoffs, so maybe I'm better off staying as is and waiting for the world to either figure out what to do with me or to catch up with me.

Waiting makes me restless.

Summertime in a small town is exactly why I knit. I can't sit still, and yarn is cheaper than drugs.

Failer

In the spirit of Crescent City Sucks, here's my rant about town:
My Town is a town of small pleasures. It is a town for the long-suffering. Months and months of bad weather, and a little sunshine feels like heaven. Populated by assholes, so a little niceness goes a long way. Sort of a strip-mall of a town, which makes the surroundings seem that much more of a blessing. This is a town of low expectations. It is exactly this that makes My Town a town of permissiveness. It's OK to fail to follow through, it's OK to reneg on promises made, it's OK to fail to live up to your potential. All of these things are forgivable here, and few seem to understand why I can't cotton to it.

I want to refuse to accept these disappointments, I want to refuse to sacrifice my integrity, but what would it change? It seems foolish to rail against something so pervasive. It seems a waste of energy to get upset about it. In refusing to get upset, though, am I becoming part of the permissiveness problem? Am I allowing people to fail me? Today, My Town seems like a bastard town, and all of us are complicit.

Dream Jobs

I've long said that I aspire to be a reenactor. You know, the actors on shows like "Cops" or "Snapped" who play the parts of victims or perpetrators of real-life crimes? I think I could do this. Wooden acting? Check. Easy lines? Check. I suppose that this job could also entail stints at Civil War battle recreations, but that doesn't sound as fun, and I don't look that good in gray.
Thanks to my friend, Pants, I can add one more job listing to my Dream Jobs list: Surreal Estate Agent. I think I can get this one rolling immediately. For sale: your alternate life, the one where you met your true love in the second grade and bought Apple at $2 and are now a billionare. Must be available for fourth-dimension travel. Call me about viewings.

The art of losing isn't hard to master

I lose things all the time: keys, sunglasses, wristwatches, telephone numbers, et cetera. I don't know why any one loss should bother me more than others, but the loss of innnocence (or perhaps more appropriately at my age the loss of ignorance) is every time a shuddering one. If everyone always spoke truth, this wouldn't be so hard.

Confidential to monkeyface: your lie reflects my lie. Let's embrace it, or get a new blasted hobby.

Please stop this ride. I want off.

I've been traveling for...oh...three weeks straight. Haven't slept in five days, and my eyelids have been lined with sandpaper at some point when I wasn't paying attention. Genius observation of the day: two insomniacs make terrible bedfellows. They sleep in shifts.